Aghanistan & Iraq: The Top Brass Speaks

A retired military friend sent me this set of points made last week by General John Abizaid, commander of US forces in Afghanistan & Iraq, in remarks at the Naval War College: (1) Congress and the public are badly misinformed about how the wars in Iraq & Afghanistan are going; (2) the insurgency in Iraq remains in 4 of 18 provinces, with the other 14 doing quite nicely; (3) the unrest in Afghanistan is mainly in the pro-Taliban Kandahar province and the mountainous border region with Pakistan; (4) there are now over 200,000 native troops in Iraq and 70,000 in Afghanistan; (5) the Iraqi casualty rate is double that for the US; (6) Iraq is in transition in 2006; (7) Taliban are funded by drug money; (8) our opponents cannot win on the battlefield--if they prevail it will be in the media, by demoralizing American public attitudes.